Graduate Students

After receiving my B.S. in both Marine Science and Biology from the University of Miami, I decided to trade corals reefs for kelp forests and move west. I have harbored a passion for biology since my first year of high school and it didn’t take long for me to realize that I wanted to pursue a career in research. OIMB’s proximity to the coast and small community were exactly what I needed in a research institution. I have participated in research pertaining to wetland paleoecology, reef fish developmental ecology, and now bivalve reproductive biology. I am currently studying gametogenesis and spawning periodicity within Coos Bay populations of the Olympia oyster. My work is part of a collaborative effort to provide a clearer ecological/developmental understanding of an organism that has seen extensive and drastic population declines in the last century. Ultimately, my findings will contribute a body of knowledge used to inform restoration efforts across the west coast of North America. Update: Mark defended his thesis successfully in June, 2013 and is now living in the San Francisco Bay area.

Amy Burgess, Ph.D. Student

Amy Burgess is a Ph.D. student with an interest in subtidal community ecology. Her dissertation explores the effects of large pacific waves and other water movements on benthic communities off Cape Arago, Oregon. She serves as a student representative on the boards of both ASLO (American Society of Limnology and Oceanography) and The Oceanography Society. Prior to coming to OIMB, Amy completed an undergraduate Biology degree at BYU and a M.S. (working on Dungeness crab biology) under Steve Sulkin at Western Washington University. Amy (shown here monitoring a deep plankton tow off Barbados) is a competent MOCNESS technician and is the main operator of OIMB’s Phantom ROV.

Kirstin Meyer, Ph.D. Student

Kirstin Meyer is a PhD student working on the ecology of deep-sea dropstone communities. She began this work as a Fulbright Fellow at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, an institution with which she continues to collaborate, and is now supported by an NSF graduate fellowship at OIMB. She will test hypotheses about community assembly and structure on several kinds of deep-water isolated substrata: dropstones from icebergs in the North Atlantic, dropstones from glaciers in a Norwegian Fjord, volcanic stones on the underwater slopes of Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii, and isolated stones in the Oregon subtidal zone.

Dylan Cotrell, Honors Student

Dylan Cotrell is a student in the Clark Honors College who recently completed his honors thesis in the Young lab. His thesis characterized the rich bryozoan fauna found on deep cobbles and boulders off Cape Arago. Using scanning electron microscopy to illustrate and identify the bryozoan species, Dylan compiled a faunal list that included numerous range extensions and a new species.

Shannon Reiser, Honors student

Shannon Reiser is an undergraduate student in Clark Honors College who is working on her honors thesis under the direction of Craig Young. She us using GoPro time-lapse video cameras to explore tidal and circadian rhythms of animals living in tidepools and shallow subtidal habitats.

Courses

Selected Publications

Bio

Craig Young received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Alberta in 1982. After three years on the faculty at Florida State University, he moved to Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Florida, where he worked as a research scientist and professor for 17 years, while holding adjunct appointments at Florida Institute of Technology, Kings College London and Florida Atlantic University. He has directed the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology since 2002. Young’s publication list numbers more than 200, including scientific papers as well as edited books. He served a ten-year term as an editor of the book series Advances in Marine Biology and currently is the editor in chief of Marine Ecology (formerly Publicazzioni della Stazione Zoologica di Napoli), the oldest continuously published journal in marine science. Within Oregon, Young serves as a member of the management commission for the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, as a member of the citizens advisory committee for Oregon Sea Grant, and as a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee on marine issues.

Additional Information

The Young lab focuses on the reproduction and early life history stages (embryos and larvae) of marine invertebrates, particularly those that live in the deep sea. To obtain access to animals living up to two miles beneath the surface, he routinely uses manned submersibles and underwater robots (Remotely Operated Vehicles) deployed from large ocean-going vessels. Over the past 30 years, Craig and his students have made hundreds of dives to the sea floor in 8 different submersibles and have worked at many marine laboratories in Europe, Asia, North America, Antarctica and Australia. Currently, the lab is involved in two large collaborative grants: one to explore larval and genetic connectivity of cold-seep organisms in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Northwest Atlantic, and one to explore the hard bottom communities in submarine canyons off the eastern U.S. Students in the lab are working on the reproduction of native oysters in Oregon and on the subtidal ecology of deep reefs and cobble fields off Cape Arago. Members of the Young lab have worked on most groups of marine invertebrates, though there has been special interest in echinoderms, ascidians, siboglinid tubeworms and sponges.